in observing the artist's heart
by albumen
Summary: Matthew likened it to a vulnerability; and perhaps it was something only he could see.


Matthew was not exactly sure what he was thinking when he said_ "okay"_; maybe it was the alcohol. Yes, that must have been it. Alfred had always teased him for being a lightweight. It was the wine.

It had been a very nice evening. Not a romantic sort of nice, but pleasant for him all the same. Francis had set out some drinks and the house hadn't been cleaned in a while because of some new project or another, but it gave Matthew a sense of importance. Surely he wouldn't show this to others. He likened it to a vulnerability — when he was too captured by his art, enraptured and perhaps could never stop the colors and the soul from flowing.

He hadn't said anything special to him but somehow Matthew felt it was, which was, of all things, possibly the most impossible to hope for. Still, it took hold of his mind and refused to let go; every time he tried to focus on the lecture, or the group project he was supposed to be contributing to, a flash of gold filled his head and with it, the smell of wine and lingering paint. Eventually his partners got fed up with it and told him to come back when he wasn't so fucking out of it, and that was fine, he thought, because that left him with only time.

The apartment was small and dingy and in the bad part of town. Matthew had urged him to move out, but Francis laughed always and said that it had much character. He wouldn't leave a house with character. Anyway, the apartment was cheap and the neighbors never complained about the noises coming from his place at night. (Matthew had cringed at that.)

He ended up standing just outside that apartment on the fourth floor hallway for three or four minutes — or had it been forty? — willing himself to knock on the chipped white door of residence 408-B, until he did, and regretted it, too, as the door remained decidedly closed.

_'Ah, well,'_ he thought, and knocked again, louder this time. For added effect, he said, "Francis? Are you there?" There was no response. "Francis — "

The door opened. "Matthew? You're here much too early — I haven't even started up the oven — "

"Oh. I'm sorry," said Matthew, but Francis only smiled.

"No, no, that's all right," he said, as Matthew walked into the apartment. There was a smudge of paint on his cheek and his hair was tied back in an altogether far too messy way. Not casually windswept, but honest-to-god messy; much unlike Francis.

"And this is what an artist at work looks like," he said, and Matthew became conscious of himself, and his unsophisticated middle-class white college kid attire, and also of his incessant staring. "I'm not particularly fond of it, myself, but the women absolutely adore it."

"Oh." And he was ushered into the living room.

The living room, which was not as much of a living room as it was an existing room, was half splattered with paints and half entirely blank, save a patch of a leak from the corner ceiling. There was a small couch, and an equally small rocking chair, which seemed to have been grandfathered in from far beyond Francis' time. He took a seat on the floor, after much consideration.

Francis came in several moments later with a bottle of wine and two wineglasses. Matthew gave him his best skeptical look, although he was sure he would have gone along with anything Francis suggested at that moment.

"It's best for starving artists and college students when they want to feel like they're living a life of luxury." He handed a glass to Matthew with a wink. "Don't you think so, too?"

A few glasses later, Matthew was inclined to agree. They downed a bottle, and then another, and then another, ad infinitum, to the point where Matthew spoke up to question the legitimacy of Francis' claim to being a "starving artist". Francis scoffed and told him he shouldn't ask such things. They had more wine, and the sun, unbeknownst to them, continued to set, and time continued to pass.

Eventually, they came to the point of too much alcohol. Or, rather, Matthew did. And from the topic of how to save money on groceries Francis led into "I'd like you to become my model." There was no awkward transition, or smooth transition, or any transition at all because it was Francis the bold and maybe because Matthew was drunk and a lightweight at that and

"Okay," said Matthew. (Later, in the morning in his small dorm room he would think, _why_ and _what the fuck was I thinking_ and _god what if I have an erection during a session _and then he would take a cold shower.)

Francis clapped. "Great, great. You'll come tomorrow?" And Matthew had nodded, only partially aware of what he was agreeing to. It was all history from then on, and then he woke up in his room with a massive headache and the lingering aftertaste of a bad decision. And wine. Too much of it, really, because that afternoon he ended up posed naked and doubting that it was as much art as it was pornography.

_Artistic_ pornography, he amended after Francis shot a disdainful look at him. It was, really; Francis worked quickly and efficiently, in a detached manner regarding his _self _without the remotest trace of … embarrassment? He did this all the time, Matthew told himself. Consoled himself. But then what had he expected? Interest? Emotion? There had always been none. He glanced at Francis' general direction.

Nothing at all, then. Francis finished his work without flair; Matthew wouldn't have known if he hadn't said, "Thank you. Could you come again tomorrow? You know the way out." They were dull words, and perhaps he wasn't as good a model as he could have been, or he wasn't as special as he'd hoped to have been, or maybe his body was too bony and lanky and exactly the opposite of modelesque but —

_Francis smiled tiredly with them, said, because he knew, "I'm but the outlet. It's only art."_

— but he supposed he could think of it as another way of seeing vulnerability; importance.


End file.
